Drakesboro Kentucky, News has just emerged that technicians operating in a Google Street View vehicle collided with a Penny Farthing or high wheeler carrying fugitive conspiracy novelist Thomas Pynchon in rural Kentucky. Google spokesman:"We had to go back around Drakesboro (home of the Everly brothers) there and re-shoot some stuff and Pynchon zoomed out from an alley on this high-wheeler before our people had time to engage their breaks." Pynchon is believed to have been wearing a top hat as a travel disguise.

Local law enforcement placed Pynchon in custody thus ending a nearly half century manhunt during which time the novelist frequently staged releases of what on first sight appeared to be original and brilliant but then turned out to be long-winded and verbose yawnfests, featuring dense plotting driven by esoteric conspiracy theories and increasingly juvenile,heavy- handed humour, with impunity.

Professor of English, Harvard "Two questions, first- maybe I came late to the party on this one but is there a reason Pynchon got around rural Kentucky for 50 years on an old-time bike incognito? Second-The CIA are currently conducting tests to determine if Pynchon is immortal like he claims to be. If he is then civilisation has a permanent uncomfortable truth to reckon with alongside climate change, how do we stop more Pynchon books ambushing the impressionable reader because if we all don't sit down as a society and say "ok, we gotta stop this" there will be more and more of them not just in our time but in the time of our grandchildren and in the time of their grandchildren."

The Penny Farthing or High Wheeler was invented in Britain in the 1870s by James Starley. Top Hats were a popular item of Victorian headware until it was proved that wearing one increased your chances of contracting syphilis making Pynchon's decision to wear one more risky.

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